This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Apr 19, 2007
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- A bill that would prohibit construction of a pair of large dairy farms next to one of the state's most historic monuments in black history cleared the first legislative hurdle Wednesday.
The measure, AB576, would create a 2.5-mile buffer zone around Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park, a site of a Tulare County town founded by African Americans nearly 100 years ago.
Supported by Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, D-Los Angeles, and the California L
Source: AP
Apr 19, 2007
MIAMI -- Anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, an aging ex-CIA operative suspected in a decades-old Cuban airliner bombing, was released from U.S. custody Thursday and flew to Miami as he awaits trial on immigration fraud charges.
Posada was released from a New Mexico jail after posting bond and will stay at his wife's house in Miami...There, he will receive an electronic monitoring device...
The 79-year-old former CIA operative is awaiting a May 11 trial on allega
Source: BBC News
Apr 19, 2007
TEHRAN -- A new dam is due to open in southern Iran amid criticism it will flood an ancient site holding archaeological relics dating back 7,000 years.
The government says the Sivand dam in the Bolaghi gorge is needed by farmers in an area that has become desert.
Heritage activists have appealed to the president to postpone the flooding by some years so excavation can continue.
Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine making vessels, clay kilns and prehi
Source: Reuters
Apr 19, 2007
DUBLIN -- A letter written by a leader of Ireland's ill-fated 1916 uprising against British rule shortly before his execution will stay in Dublin after an anonymous benefactor stepped in ahead of its auction.
The previously unseen letter from Padraig Pearse listing his final requests to the commander of the British forces in Ireland had been expected to fetch 80,000 to 120,000 euros ($162,500) when it went under the hammer in Dublin earlier this week.
"The National
Source: Aftenposten (Oslo, Norway)
Apr 19, 2007
Newsreel films from occupied Norway will be released on the Internet this month.
Most of the films were made on assignment from the National Socialist authorities for propaganda purposes. [Nazi puppet president Vidkun] Quisling's role in the German occupation is toned down in the series, and he appears far less often than other members of the occupation government.
Film historian Tore Helseth believes that one possible reason for this is that Quisling was so unpopular t
Source: Live Science
Apr 19, 2007
Metals found in lake mud in the central Peruvian Andes have revealed the first evidence for pre-Colonial metalsmithing there.
These findings illustrate a way that archaeologists can recreate the past even when looters have destroyed the valuable artifacts that would ordinarily be relied upon to reveal historical secrets. For instance, the new research hints at a tax imposed on local villages by ancient Inca rulers to force a switch from production of copper to silver.
P
Source: Reuters
Apr 19, 2007
NEW YORK -- A portrait of a young girl that some believe is the only known painting of English novelist Jane Austen failed to sell at auction on Thursday.
Christie's said no one offered the owner's minimum price for the painting that had been expected to fetch between $400,000 and $800,000...
The portrait by English society artist Ozias Humphry was put up for sale by Henry Rice, a distant relative of the writer of classics such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice
Source: Daily Kent Stater
Apr 19, 2007
Karl Rove, senior political adviser to President George W. Bush, took a crowd of more than 500 through a virtual tour of the White House yesterday at Mount Union College.
Rove spoke for about 45 minutes about the rich presidential history of the White House.
"I'm really here to talk about presidential leadership," Rove said. Slides behind Rove showed images of the Oval Office, Abraham Lincoln's bedroom and the East Room. Rove described the impact that former
Source: New York Times
Apr 19, 2007
Prof. Liviu Librescu faced many trials in his 76 years, growing up and living in Romania. There were the Nazis, who imprisoned his family when he was a child. Then there was the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, which forbade him from working when he refused to join the Communist Party.
But it was a trial in a most unlikely place that proved to be deadly. On Monday, Professor Librescu faced danger when a student armed with pistols and the determination to kill approached the
Source: Washington Post
Apr 19, 2007
Lawrence M. Small, the former secretary of the Smithsonian, rarely used his Northwest Washington mansion for institution-related entertaining in the past four years, despite receiving a housing allowance totaling $1.1 million since 2000 to make his residence available for official functions, institution records released yesterday show.
Small used his property for Smithsonian events only four times in the past four years and had not used it since 2005.
Source: Washington Post
Apr 19, 2007
A PBS official said yesterday that filmmaker Ken Burns will not re-cut his documentary on World War II -- a statement that disappointed and angered minority-group activists who on Tuesday said they believed Burns and PBS had committed to reediting the film to address their concerns about its content.
Programming chief John Wilson, seeking to clarify PBS's earlier statements, said yesterday that Burns's 14 1/2 -hour documentary, "The War," is complete. That statement, howev
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 19, 2007
The British Museum has intimated that the Elgin Marbles could be lent to Athens.
Neil MacGregor, its director, said that, like any object in its collection, a loan would be possible if the Greek Government acknowledged the museum’s ownership of the sculptures.
The Greek authorities hailed his comments as unprecedented. One source told The Times: “This is the first time they’ve ever said they’d let them out of the museum. We’ve said we’re not disputing the ownership.”
Source: BBC News
Apr 19, 2007
Rwanda has asked the International Court of Justice to quash French arrest warrants issued against nine associates of President Paul Kagame.
The government cannot function properly, as officials like the army chief-of-staff are unable to travel abroad, says Rwanda's justice minister.
The warrants were issued in November after a French judge implicated Mr Kagame in his predecessor's killing.
Former President Juvenal Habyarimana's death sparked the 1994 genoc
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 19, 2007
Forget St. George, the saint of slaying dragons, the Crusades and the England football supporter. It is time for the patron saint of England to be “rebranded” as a persecuted representative of Britain’s ethnic minorities, a black dissenter who rebelled against the abuse of power.
Ekklesia, the influential theological think-tank, today calls for St. George, who appeared to the Crusader army at Antioch in the 11th century and was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers, to be given a
Source: Telegraph
Apr 19, 2007
WARSAW -- The former military leader of Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, has been charged with "communist crimes" for declaring martial law in an attempt to crush the Solidarity movement in 1981.
The charges against the 83-year-old ex-soldier, who was Polish president for most of the 1980s, came after the Institute of National Remembrance, the office charged with investigating Poland's communist past, passed documents to a Warsaw court. Eight other former high-ranking
Source: Independent
Apr 19, 2007
BRUSSELS -- Holocaust denial will be punishable by jail terms across the EU -- but only if it incites violence or hatred against specific groups -- under measures due to be agreed today.
After six years of negotiation, the agreement is likely to be sealed, despite pressure from Baltic states for the crimes committed by Stalin to be brought into the scope of the law...
Consensus over the deal has been achieved by whittling away at the impact of the legislation, leaving a
Source: Azzaman (Baghdad, Basra, London)
Apr 18, 2007
Iraqi Yazidis are paying a heavy price for their tenacious adherence to their religious practices...
Attacks on Yazidis have surged recently and almost all Yazidi families living outside the autonomous Kurdish region have fled the country...
Most of the killings were perpetrated on religious grounds as fundamentalist and Islamist groups see them as infidels who either have to convert or be killed.
The Yazidi religion is a conglomeration of different faith
Source: USA Today
Apr 18, 2007
They're calling it "the unkindest cut of all." As Shakespeare fans prepare to celebrate the Bard's 443rd birthday Monday, researchers for a non-profit group say fewer colleges appear to require students to study the influential author.
Just 15 of 70 institutions studied require English majors to take a course on Shakespeare, says a report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a Washington-based group that promotes academic quality. At least six of those schools d
Source: BBC News
Apr 18, 2007
It started out as an enterprising school project and ended up as a living history lesson. When pupils in Tamworth [Staffordshire], wrote a series of letters to war veterans, Britain's oldest man Henry Allingham offered to answer their questions about World War I face-to-face. [Rajesh Mirchandani of] the BBC observed how the generation gap was bridged and two of the pupils reveal what they learned.
...What Henry does care about is trying to give young people a flavour of his i
Source: UTV (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
Apr 18, 2007
The politician son of firebrand unionist Ian Paisley is to visit a military exhibition at a Dublin museum named after former IRA leader Michael Collins, it has been revealed.
It is the latest in a series of remarkable meetings signalling an apparently new-found neighbourliness between the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party and the Irish Republic...
Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern will guide the junior minister-designate in the restored Stormont power-shar
